Jun
2
Anthony Grafton on the Republic of Letters
“Citizens of the Republic (of Letters) carried no passports, but they could recognize one another by certain marks…. They looked for learning, for humanity, and for generosity, and they rewarded those who possessed these qualities. Any young man, and more than a few young women, could pay the price of admission. If they mastered Latin and, ideally, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic; became proficient at what now seem the unconnected skills of mathematics and astronomy, history and geography, and physics and music; visited any recognized scholar—from John Locke in London to Giambattista Vico in Naples—bearing a letter from a senior scholar, and greeted their host in acceptable Latin or French, they were assured of everything a learned man or woman could want: a warm and civilized welcome, a cup of chocolate (or, later, coffee), and an hour or two of ceremonious conversation on the latest editions of the classics and the most recent sightings of the rings of Saturn.”— Anthony Grafton, Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West, pp. 20–1. The Republic of Letters was a web; its nodes were the printing houses and libraries of great scholars; its members were scholars but also printers, artisans, apothecaries, botanists, and the like. This motley network emerged in the violent years of Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The printing press was its engine, perhaps, but its media were travel, learning, and letters in which, as Grafton puts it, “the outlines, highways, and capitals of the Republic can be seen most clearly.”
